Theology in the Raw - 718: #718 - A Conversation with Luke Thompson

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

On episode #718 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Luke Thompson. Luke is a listener of Theology in the Raw, stay at home dad, and a totally normal dude. Follow Luke on Twitter. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am so excited about this episode, and not for reasons that you may think. If I was going to have like Beth Moore or Francis Chan or Pope Francis or Donald Trump or Barack Obama on the show, then I would probably introduce it by saying, I'm so excited I got like Barack Obama on the show, then I would probably introduce it by saying, I'm so excited. I got like Barack Obama on the show and I got this celebrity. I'd be so stoked about that. But I'm super excited about this episode for an entirely different reason. I have on the show, the one and only Luke Thompson. Now, most of you are not going to recognize the name Luke Thompson.

And that's why I'm so excited about this episode. Let me give you just a really, really brief backstory. I met Luke several years ago on social media. He was and is an avid listener to the podcast. He, at the time, lived in North Dakota. Now he lives in Minneapolis. Um, he at the time lived in North Dakota. Now he lives in Minneapolis. He is a stay at home dad. He's got a few kids, got a wife, and he's just a totally normal dude. And you're like, why the heck do you have him on your podcast? Uh, good question. Because Luke is an amazing guy. He's a normal guy. He is you. Quite honestly, I sometimes get tired of the rat race of always trying to get some celebrity person, some big name, some person that's going to retweet this episode, tons of followers, and I can get more people following the podcast. I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, I can care less about all that stuff. following the podcast. I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, I can care less about all that stuff. I want to talk to really thoughtful people who are willing to engage in hard conversations,

who are widely read, who are deep thinkers, who are passionate about Jesus, who have a solid yet broken and imperfect yet persistent spiritual life. Luke is that guy. And I reached out to Luke. I reached out to Luke a few weeks ago. It's not like he said, hey, I want to be on your podcast. He would never ask me that. But I reached out to him and said, look, you've been listening to this podcast for a while. We talk all the time. And I would love for you to be on this podcast because Luke is a brilliant guy. He's an incredibly widely read person. He's such a deep thinker and he's a normal guy. And I love Luke because he shows that you don't need to be some platformed, degreed scholar to be a thoughtful

Christian. And Luke is an incredibly thoughtful Christian, as you will hear from this episode. Have you heard of the platform Vox, the app where you can like, it's like a walkie talkie basically. I only Vox one or two people in my sphere. Luke and I, we Vox back and forth several times a week. We are constantly shooting thoughts to each other. And I just love this guy. He's so thoughtful. And I'm excited for you to listen in on our conversation. So please welcome to this show, the one and only Luke Thompson. and we are on thank you so much luke thompson for joining me on this episode you are coming in live from i'm going to assume, cold and snowy Minneapolis. Is that correct?

Yeah, it is. However, it's been kind of warm lately. It's been getting up into the 40s, so all the snow's melting. Yeah, it's the same here. Yeah, my wife's sad about maybe not having a really idyllic white Christmas. Yeah. But typically, it's pretty cold in Minneapolis, right? So I want to start by, we could just dive into your journey, and specifically your recent,

I'm not sure the best way to word this, but your recent sort of departure from a traditional evangelical, non-denominational Bible church kind of environment to joining a Greek, is it Greek Orthodox or just Eastern Orthodox? So it's, it's the Orthodox church in America, which stemmed out of the Russian Orthodox church. Oh, okay. So yeah. Can you help unpack for us why you would make that transition?

I know that's a, you could probably spend an hour at least unpacking that, but why don't we start there? And I'm sure that'll lead us to various strands of ideas that we can pursue. Yeah. So I guess probably the shortest way and most succinct way to summarize it is that I, by nature, and this is something we talk about sometimes, you and I, and by temperament, am kind of a think-outside-the-box intellectual outsider. Like, even if you, however you want to, I'm really big into, I've gotten really big into psychology and temperament stuff.

And my temperament is just, I'm always trying to see the thing that nobody else is seeing. You know, it's that, I can't, I always forget this guy's name. He's a American author, but he has this quote about, you know, fish and water. And then they meet this old fish and the old fish says to the young fish, you know, how's the water? And they both look at each other and they're just like, what's water? What's water. Right. Yeah. And, um, or I've heard people say, you know, the hardest thing to get people to see is the thing that everybody's decided not to see. Yeah. So, um, or I've heard people say, you know, the hardest thing to get people to see is the thing that everybody's decided not to see. Yeah. Yeah.

So, um, by nature, I've always kind of been that way, which, um, like everything, I mean, it's a strength and a weakness, you know, it can be, if you're unhealthy, if I would say, if you're not a person of humility and character, even if that's your temperament, you're going to be divisive and kind of a jerk, which I've been that, you know? So that's kind of my nature. And so the short way to summarize the transition to Orthodoxy, which we're not fully in it yet. I mean, we're not even, me and my family aren't even catechumens yet. We're kind of taking the process slowly, which that just means someone who's studying and in the process of entering the Orthodox Church. Okay.

It got to the, and I'm kind of just a nerd. I mean, the theology nerd. Anything that I get into, I go pretty deep. Like I try to get to the bottom of the well. And I'm into philosophy and all kinds. And I just, it got to the point where churches that I went to when I wanted to, when we want to discuss theology or Bible or anything, we just kept coming to stalemates. It got to the point where like we were speaking different languages

essentially. And, um, can you give me an example? Cause I, as I talked to you, you still have, I would say a basic general evangelical theology i mean you believe in the bible jesus the gospel you yeah i mean i mean all this like no one would meet you and say oh he's obviously not evangelical you still have an evangelical sort of yeah but i would even say like that i mean those are that's just that's just or that's just broader small o orthodox i mean that's just broad christ small o, orthodox. I mean, that's just broad Christian.

Like all those things that you're saying, I would say every traditional Christian has affirmed forever. Okay. And so it's not like this gets into a quote that I wrote that I love, and you and I both love N.T. Wright, is his quote in Scripture and the Authority of God. He talks about theology being a shorthand. And he said, it's like, we tend to treat theology as suitcases that are full of all these ideas, you know, it's like, or you could think of it as like super condensed DNA or something, or suitcases. And so he said, most of our conversations have seemed like us going around hitting each other with suitcases. We said, maybe what we ought to do is open those up, air them out, see what's in there, see if some things need looking at or ironed. And that's kind of been... It's such a great analogy.

Yeah. And that's kind of been, that's something I've always wanted to do. have been, that's something I've always wanted to do. And this is another way to look at it. And I found that within, at least within most of the evangelical churches that I've been a part of, especially among the leadership and people who are into theology and thinking about stuff, they didn't ever want to unpack suitcases. You know, they just kind of wanted to, you know, Jonathan Haidt quote that I love is like, look at any group and you'll find around this inner ring of sacrosanct belief that you can't, that there's a ring of motivated ignorance around. And I always found these rings of motivated ignorance. And I just said, like, we're not even, we're not even talking about the substance of this stuff. We're just talking over that.

And it's driving me nuts essentially and so really that's probably the truth of it more than anything is it got to the point where i was so frustrated about it all the time that i just became a pretty broadly negative person and my wife was just like we can't i can't have you be this negative all the time you know because i was so consumed with it you know because i care about this stuff and um and uh and if we could have just dealt with i always said this like if we could have if we could have just left it merely practical and just had interpersonal relationships and talked about things and tried to like apply this stuff in really practical ways and not have the intellectual conversations i I would have probably been fine.

But I always went to like intellectual evangelical churches, you know, kind of the Reformed, Baptist, Calvinist stripe. Yeah. So it wasn't so much the specific beliefs or the specific practices. It was the ideological tribalism that didn't foster or even allow a deeper exploration exploration of the ideological tribalism sort of commitment right and and you and i i mean how we met up was a lot of it connected is the whole hell thing and so like that right so like even even when you get on want to get into deeper issues of hell i would would say that that's a manifestation of the deeper spiritual problem. Because like you can, another way to think of spirit,

which this is a thing that I've learned through people like Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Pajot or anything is pattern. The spirit is the pattern underneath the material or the embodied manifestation that continues and that subsists. That's a really good way to conceptualize spirit. And so I would say

that ideological tribalism, you couldn't ever explicitly have a conversation about it, but it was underneath most discussions about anything. Real quick, just to make sure it's clear. So when you say spirit, you're not talking capital S, Holy Spirit, nor even like the human spirit. You're talking like the zeitgeist, the spirit of the thing.

Yeah, broadly the youth spirit. However, I mean, we could go super nerdy. I don't even think it's wrong to apply that to other kinds of spirits. You get into principalities, elementary spirits, that kind of stuff. Okay. Okay. That's good. Okay. Keep going. Sorry to cut you off. So it got to the point where I was frustrated and I had been interested from a distance with Orthodox ways of thinking and theology. Like I had gotten into a big distinction between Eastern and Western Christian thought is apophatic versus cataphatic, which is positive versus negative theology.

So like in the church father, pseudo Dionysius, and it's just is a prominent apophatic theologian. So they tend to think you can find it within both strains. Actually, it's just greater emphasize in the East. So ap tend to think, you can find it within both strains, actually. It's just greater emphasized in the East. So apophatic is what God is. It's what God isn't. Isn't. And then what's the other one? Cataphatic is what God is. Cataphatic is positive statements about God.

So God is love. God is good. God is whatever. And those tend to be emphasized in the West. But in my opinion, and I just think it's true, it's easier to speak negatively about God. And not pejoratively, but within negative affirmations of what God isn't. Okay. And it's really hard to think of examples of those. But like if you, Wikipedia is great. And it has a lot of, like if you just look up cataphatic or apathetic theology they'll have tons of quotes from church fathers that are really great to kind of give you

a better idea of it but i feel like wikipedia has gotten better over the years it used to be kind of the bane of every teacher's yeah uh existence because students are just citing wikipedia and so right is it is it improved because i feel like when like when I search for stuff and I use a wiki article, I wouldn't use it for publishable research or whatever. It's kind of a quick overview that's going to basically give you helpful information that's more accurate than it isn't. I mean it was largely very accurate. It's a good source, right? Yeah, I think so. And I think because ideally mean ideally that i think

that's what the internet should be you know if it's something's truly open source like that like you just can't put out nonsense because people just be like no that's ridiculous yeah okay you know um so i think you can find really yeah there's you can go down a deep rabbit hole if you're yeah a nerd oh yeah i've done that now about the clickable links. I'll search for something and then I'll just keep clicking. Oh, yeah. For sure. Okay.

So if I can kind of put it in my own words, you didn't feel the freedom to kind of just think and rethink and even question, not question as in disagree with, but literally just raise the question about certain, even things that were considered just foundational, fundamental. And it's that lack of intellectual generosity that was frustrating. Yeah, it felt like it's not the freedom.

I don't know. You can cage that negatively. It's not the freedom to just be like, I'm my own individual. I can do what I want. Don't tread on me. Get off me. Just kind of like that autonomous American individualism. But it's the freedom. I would cage it this way. It's the freedom to be honest. talk about too, like that gets, it gets into free speech because being able to speak what you honestly think is what thinking is like, you're just doing that out loud. And, and if, and if you are in a culture that doesn't allow you to do that, whether religiously, theologically in your family, politically, like that's not good. I mean, you're're you're gonna breed either just overt hypocrisy or pharisees i mean you're not gonna breed authentic christians yeah um and you you may i mean i that's not it's not universal i mean you're gonna sure breathe speaking in generalities right i mean you

can you're gonna breed there's gonna be authentic christians there but can, you're going to breed, there's going to be authentic Christians there, but, um, but you're definitely going to create a culture among a certain type of people. That's not going to be good. Yeah. So you found something different in the Orthodox church? Cause I mean the Orthodox church in the sense, or even, I mean, most denominational churches, but especially churches with such rich traditions like the Orthodox church or Roman Catholic church. such rich traditions like the Orthodox Church or Roman Catholic Church, I mean, there's certain beliefs that they are what the church believes, and you don't question that, right? Right. Or do they foster that?

From a Protestant, low evangelical kind of background that I have, you know, I see like, oh, if you're Catholic, that just means you believe in papal authority and praying to the saints. Like, you're not, you cannot question that because that's already been decided or is that is that a caricature well well so that gets into even because this is where within church history even the latin church or the catholic church is in the west so like even even that kind of thinking that i think that kind of spirit again that's pro that's within a lot of my Protestant experience, is in a lot of ways still present within the Catholic Church.

Because the Catholic Church is also much more focused on positive theology and church dogmatics and encyclicals and like jotting every I and T. And the difference is really subtle. It's not as if the eastern church doesn't have theological writings and theological thinking and thoughts and insights and things but they're not it's not nearly as dogmatic and it's not nearly as binding because within eastern thought the only thing that's binding for christian thought has to be approved through ecumenical councils so they're like it's the first seven ecumenical councils.

That's what's necessary for Christian thought, the creeds, the things that came out of those councils. And outside of that, there's, I mean, what is complete freedom? Is that why? So even with views on the afterlife, I've heard that the Orthodox doesn't have like one position like the Roman Catholic church or even, I i mean i hate to say the protestant church largely just yeah but the orthodox church i heard very much allows for an

ectv of hell universalism annihilation like all of them would be you can still be orthodox and hold to either one of those yeah i think that's true i mean and and I want to just a quick preface to all this. Like I'm a total novice when it comes to orthodoxy. I the reason that we went there largely just to round that all off is that I wanted to. I had the conviction that, OK, I want to check this out from the inside. You know, I don't want to I don't want to read about it from the outside and then hear about things. Because that's how I grew up with, you know, Roman Catholicism or anything. Like as a Protestant, you just hear negative things like they're Mary worshipers. And you hear all these negative ways to, to frame it.

But I mean, I've never talked still, I've never talked to a, what I would consider to be really intellectually solid, sound, passionate, practicing Catholic. Yeah. Yeah. to a what i would consider to be really intellectually solid sound passionate practicing catholic yeah yeah um and i don't like i don't like learning about subjects from people who don't hold the view you know i just don't think it's a good way to learn about stuff yeah interesting well let's transition out of that uh and so one of the things I said in the intro that you and I, we correspond on Voxer several times a week. And I mean, I don't know how your Voxing world is. You're pretty much the only person that Vox. I don't do that with anybody else. And one of the things that comes up quite frequently has to do in some capacity with Jordan Peterson. Yeah. So why don't – I've actually been in environments recently where I'll mention Jordan Peterson and people are like, who's Jordan Peterson?

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And really smart people too. Yeah, yeah. But there's people I don't know that people are like, how can you not know who this person is? But, so no shame there. But why don't you give us just a really, because you, yeah, let me just say, the reason why I want you to speak into this is because you consume, you have consumed massive quantities of talks and videos and debates.

And there's a lot of, there's a ton of stuff out there, but you have gotten your arms around a lot of it find a lot of it compelling or at least helpful um so give us a quick background who is jordan peterson and what was it about him that drew you in as an interested kind of connoisseur of his yeah um so that's yeah that's a great um a lot i mean i and i tell people this and i think it's largely true from from my perspective and in my opinion i think i would say he's in my opinion i think he's probably the most important living intellectual right now um and and i mean that'll be a really whatever we talk it'll be a really triggering thing for some people because some people like there's a um i was gonna look for it recently and you're familiar with camille paglia that's how you say it yeah she um she endorsed his book yeah and she was interviewed recently.

I think she identifies as transgender. She's a feminist. She's a lesbian. Okay, I thought I heard her say she identifies as transgender. No, no, no. Brilliant. I mean, brilliant. I can't keep up with her when she talks because I'm just like you're way too smart for me but she had a quote recently from an interview

where they just asked her about jordan peterson because she had an interaction with him which if you want to watch a youtube um discussion a good one it's his with his with hers excellent um but her quote was something like ah ah, I might just find it, but it essentially said, cause I'm not gonna be able to summarize it as well as she did, but she said something like, she has yet to meet someone, a journalist or a perspective or anything positive or negative that takes in the vast scope and importance and, and, and relevance of Jordan Peterson's work. Really? Yeah. And she, I mean, she just, she thinks that he's, and I mean,

Jordan Peterson kind of, he became really well known through a couple of things and how I was first exposed to him was he's on the Rogan podcast. Yeah. And that's how I first heard of him. And I was just like, who is this guy? I mean, he's clearly brilliant. Yeah. And then, and then he got really, where he blew up even more before his book was the Kathy Newman interview. The likes the one where, I mean, there's, there's tons of memes where she was

interviewing him and he would say something and she'd say, so what you're saying is, and she'd keep reinterpreting everything that he was saying. And he would say, no, that's not what I'm saying. And that's what you find a lot with Jordan Peterson. So to answer your question, I got into him through Rogan, but what's complicated about him, and I don't really care. I mean, some people are going to be mad because they just want to be against Jordan Peterson because they see him as whatever kind of negative label you want to throw on him. But the thing about Jordan Peterson, and as most complex thinkers, is they're nuanced. And the things that they're talking about is complicated.

And he's clearly brilliant i mean he's in he's in a small range of of people of that kind of intellect yeah and i mean so he was a he was a professor of psychology at harvard before he went to university of toronto yeah both. I mean, obviously everybody knows Harvard's top. I mean, you don't just waltz in and get a job at Harvard as a professor and then at University of Toronto. So yeah, he's just... Love him or hate him, to say he's

incredibly brilliant is kind of a neutral statement. It's not, I affirm everything he says or don't. I could say Hitler was brilliant. He was a good person right right that you said but um so yeah my point is yeah it's just to to um to dismiss what he's saying offhand without putting in a considerable amount of work to try to understand him is probably stemming from hubris versus substance. Well,

and most people that I've seen that don't like him and I'm not saying like disagree with some things. I disagree with some things you do too, but that actually just think he's, uh, should be silenced that he's incredibly unhelpful. The, the,

when, when I, and I i don't i've never actually personally interacted with people but i see stuff online when i see them and give their sort of summary of what he's what they think he's saying or has said it's like they're talking about somebody else in fact rogan has said a couple times that he that rogan said jordan peterson is the number one most misunderstood mis misrepresented, not misunderstood, but misrepresented. People not even trying to understand him figure in the world today. And I would kind of agree with that.

I think that's true for what I know out there. I mean, and I mean, and that's again, he's just probably the most extreme example because he's so hot right now. But that's what we do to everybody. I mean, that's why I don't like watching political shows and talking heads because nobody's trying to, those people aren't trying to understand. Like they just want to yell at each other because, you know, you're both within your tribal ideologies and it's just like, get on the right team. You know, you're on the wrong team. technologies and it's just like get on the right team you know you're on the wrong team and so seeking to understand is is a rarity especially when it's something that's as complicated as the stuff that jordan peterson's trying to talk about which is like the nature of consciousness you know

it tends to be it's funny his like i'm reading his book and listen to a lot of stuff the the the lar the the primary focus of his work is and i hate using this term but it kind of is true is self-help in a sense like he's trying to help people live a better more flourishing life at the end of the day yeah he has seen massive results from that i love hearing the stories he shares of people that whose lives were a train wreck then they get on youtube see some of his lectures and then now they have repaired relationships with their family their fathers their kids their neighbor they're healthy physically psychologically they've quit you know an

addiction and right there's just such clear positive results of what he's trying to accomplish which is primarily again self-help seems to diminish the intellectual whatever. I just mean it as he's trying to help people live better, more flourishing lives. Now, with that has come several controversial things that we could possibly explore. But to me, it's telling, if not sad, that it's not like he's... Some people have compared him like a Milo Yiannopoulos or something or something or just like a provocateur somebody that just wants to stir the pot i'm like that's yes the pot is being stirred in his wake but his goal that he's actually seen much success is

helping people be better people right i mean what you say i mean yeah you have to ask i think with those kinds of things you have to ask the question of i I don't know. I don't like to get too deeply into trying to discern motive. It's important, but he had a podcast where he talked about in a blog, blog, probably where he used this phrase called falsely true words. And so he said there, there is such a thing as falsely true words. And those are words that are true, but they, but they either come out of a place where used in a way that isn't toward the good. They're not, I mean, and it kind of gets into that classical triad that sometimes we talk about truth, goodness, and beauty. Like just because something's true or Jesus said, you know, like in good,

in now I'm going to space on the Jesus quote. What is it? The good tree bears good fruit? The tree one? No, no, no, no. I came in truth and love. The whole truth and love. Truth and grace. Truth and grace. Truth and grace. There you go.

Gee me. I'll quote all this other stuff. I can't quote like this. I'm not sure you're even a Christian anymore. Yeah, right. But so you can say something. And I mean, I think all of us know this anecdotally and experientially like you can you're having a fight with your wife or you're angry at your kids I mean you might say something that's true right but it's not coming out of a place that wants their good in that moment it's coming out of a place of impulsive entitlement that like i'm mad and i want to make you feel bad well those are falsely true words and so even with um with someone like uh jordan peterson or like anything like that you can

there may be okay i lost the thread there may be things that are true about people but but your intent with with that language isn't uh isn't to pursue the truth you know it's maybe driven by ego or whatever are you saying you're not saying that peterson does that as much i mean obviously we all fall prey to that but you're saying when people critique him that's that's what i think a lot of it comes out of that um and not universally i mean i've seen people who have, like one of the best, from my vantage point, Christian critiques and perspectives on him is this guy. And I only know him through Twitter, but Alistair Roberts, British theologian thinker, but he's interacted with Peterson's work really in depth and so he has a and he's not trying he has no I think kind of false agenda and he's and he's really trying to interact with it in an honest and authentic way and uh and so he had he had some criticisms of of him I mean I don't know that I'd necessarily agree with him completely because i think we have some different starting places perhaps but um

but you know that's that's part of it it's just he's a he's an incredibly hard guy to wrap your head around and like even you and i talk about i mean i have to watch and re-listen and read stuff that he says over and over and over before it sinks in i I mean, it's just hard. Yeah. I think, uh, yeah. I mean, it, and that is for the most part, comes with anybody that is super brilliant. It's very rare. I mean, there's a lot of brilliant people in the world. It's very rare that somebody is very brilliant and yet can communicate complex truths in a way that doesn't dim down the thing that they're talking about, but can be understood by somebody that's not on that same level of

brilliance. I think NT Wright in terms of biblical scholars is hands down, probably the best at that. He's just an incredibly clear, compelling, beautiful communicator. And obviously he's brilliant. I think,

yeah, I think that's, that's, yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I think that's, that's, yeah, I think, I think sometimes Jordan Peterson's brilliance can get him into trouble. And the one thing I, you know, when he talked about, um, and we've talked about this Luke, but, um, in four is it enforced monogamy with the concept that got him in the hot water. got him in the hot water yeah um and i know what so here you and i are gonna say huh that sounds odd enforced monogamy and warner x response is i'm going to try to understand what he's actually

trying to say what does he mean by that what does he mean by that that that's our response but a lot of other people didn't go there they just assume enforced monogamy meant making people get married or something or whatever. He was playing into a larger philosophical concept. My pushback to him is like, look, you got to be a little bit more aware that the average person is going to hear that. And of course, they're going to be like, huh? And you could have. He's just like, no, I'm not going to make an effort to over explain what I'm saying. You're going to have like, huh? Right. And you could have, he's just like, no, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make an effort to over-explain what I'm saying. You're going to have to make

the effort to dig a little deeper and understand. Well, and he, it's, it's, it's difficult because that gets back at like, even back to my whole thing that eventually made me go Orthodox or anything that I was talking about and like motivated ignorance and sacrosanct beliefs, like someone who hears someone like jordan peterson say enforced monogamy and i'm not going to say universally but a lot of the people who hear that and then get all over him and ran and go get mad and get on twitter and start saying like see he's a he's a bad guy well do you are you really seeking to understand in that moment or are you just trying to to burn down this guy that you

think isn't on your team see like what really what's your motivation there like what are you trying to do like if if the goal is really to submit if the goal is really to seek the truth and submit to a truth that you may be at this time aren't capable of apprehending or seeing which that's all of us then then you have to be open that when he's saying that he's maybe saying something that you don't understand in your impulsive judgment yeah and that's the problem that like i want that that essentially is like the practical problem that is like the thing that i'm trying to get at in almost everything i talk about i was gonna say i mean you see that you see that posture in both extremes left and yeah and when i use the terms left or right i'm talking both so let's just say

politically and also theologically or even ecclesiologically meaning yes the far conservative brand of christianity the far left you know kind of sj conservative brand of Christianity, the far left, you know, kind of SJW brand of Christianity, both the farther you get away from a centrist, I guess, point of view, or not even centrist so much as somebody who is genuinely trying to discover and understand the truth, even if that truth is offensive or unpalatable. So let me, so I've tried to get you, I'm always pushing stuff on you truth, even if that truth is offensive or unpalatable for the majority. So let me, so I've tried to get you, I'm always pushing stuff on you that you don't have time for because you're busy. But if, so this is where I want to take that if we can. So I've been

watching a little bit more and I've been exposed to this guy through Peterson actually, but Ian McGilchrist, this guy who wrote the book the master and his emissary so he talks about like i just watched a video this morning where he um articulated this in a way that i thought was really helpful he talks about the difference between left and right brain all right and this stuff is super interesting because like all this stuff to me is coming together like you could talk about these things theologically you could talk about these things scientifically you could talk about things liturgically and they're all related it's yeah it's all at a place in at this point in my life where it's coming together and i get so pumped up it's it's great but he talks about so he talks about right brain and left brain stuff and

he and essentially that's what the book the master and his emissary are is he he would say that the there's a lot of holdover and this is how things work there's a trickle-down effect within academia whether it's theological academia scientific academia whatever that he said a lot of the ways that we think that we understand right and left brain and right and left hemisphere is is holdover stuff from like the 60s and 70s okay so people used to think that like the left brain is the reason the right brain is the artist yeah yeah and he said that i've always understood him that's he said that's super simplistic he says they actually those things work in both hemispheres

he said one of the best ways to understand it is it's almost like a map and the territory so like the left brain is the map the right brain is the territory the the left brain is like the left brain is the map. The right brain is the territory. The left brain is like the model, the thing that you can wrap your head around that gives you practical utility to actually live in the world. Whereas the right brain is the deeper kind of transcendent intuition beyond language kind of way. Because it's actually interesting because he said the left brain is the sole language operation center of the brain language operates in the left hand in the left hemisphere um and and your right brain but but there's overlap with all how all these things work interestingly i was just telling my wife too like anger is solely within the left hemisphere anger yeah which is a really interesting thing to think about so it's not reason versus emotion no blurred across yeah right but but language and and

conceptions and like the map versus the territory is all left brain and that's where anger is so like you start thinking about ideological tribalism and politics and religious tribalism and this is his argument he's coming out with a documentary called the divided brain where he would say what's happening in the west is that we have a lopsided hugely overemphasized focus on the left hemisphere and he said we've completely neglected the right hemisphere and and the right hemisphere like this is why i love this is where all this stuff comes together like even with c.s lew, and the right hemisphere. Like, this is why I love, this is where all this stuff comes together. Like even with CS Lewis and the medieval mindset and the mytho poetic mindset that Lewis and Tolkien were trying to bring out,

like that's right hemisphere stuff. That's like the, that's the, this, this gets into Jordan Peterson stuff. That is the thing like Like Jordan Peterson has said when it comes to pursuing truth that in order to be fully authentic and honest and truly pursue truth, you have to have a method, a methodology and a way of being in the world

where you are willing to submit to the truth that you don't currently apprehend. So you have to have something outside of yourself that's able to correct you, a truth that's bigger than the truth that you currently apprehend. So you have to have something outside of yourself that's able to correct you, a truth that's bigger than the truth that you currently apprehend. And that only is ever going to manifest an error because it's different from what your left brain currently understands. Oh man, I wish I had a neurologist here to... So going back to kind of the assumptions, is it true that some people are more left brain or more right brain? Or is that still way too simplistic to think like,

oh, I'm 75%, I live on my left and 25% of my right? I've often referred to myself as more of a left brain person because I am high on sort of analytical ration reason. Yeah. I like logic. I like, you know, whatever. And sometimes the ambiguity of something that's not as nailed down for me is difficult. Right.

Again, that might be a or even like compassion or empathy and stuff. Like to me, it's like reason is the way to you know like right right there's a there's a funny video that was going around with a boy and girl they were our boyfriend girlfriend arguing and uh and she's got a nail sticking out of her head have you seen this no it's three years old. She's got a big nail sticking up her head. Okay. And she's like, my head hurts so bad. And he's like, you got a nail in your head. I can take that out. She's like, stop trying to fix things.

You're always trying to fix things. Why don't you just listen to me? But I'm pretty sure that nail is causing your pain and I could take that out. You won't have, you always just try to solve the problems. Why don't you just listen to me? Yeah. Right. I don't know where I'm going with that, but, but that, yeah, that whole, like even, even,

even though it's so humorous, I'm like, yeah, that drives me crazy even watching it. Cause I'm like, right. Use your mind, use your ration, your reasoning skills to fix things rather than trying to just rely on you know but that's not how the world works and i know so so what i would say is the world does work that way and it doesn't like there are instances where like that cartoon is portraying something that's accurate like there are there are times when something like that that that's trying to get at the funny the reason that's funny is because that's true sometimes yeah um where the the place where it's untrue is that you can't

totalize that because there are instances where people like in the left brain the overemphasized left brain they think they see a problem really objectively and clearly and they don't okay and so they um so this gets into like george box one of my favorite quotes that i get into he's a statistician uh but he he said all models are wrong some are useful um and and this is really i mean you can break that down and you can think about a lot of models in ways like one of my favorite is like if i am trained within chemistry i'm not at all i'm way more interested in the arts now and in the liberal arts but yeah um but like even the bohr model the electron is the ball with the electron going around it that

has the and then it has the nucleus with the you know protons and neutrons and all that stuff so like that's a model of how we understand an atom is that what an atom is you know is that what an electron is no like that's just a way of wrapping your head around something that you can't wrap your head around so that's not like a physical representation of what actually is there it's just a way to help us understand what right and and it gets harder the further you get down like with an electron well it behaves like a particle and a wave well which is it it's both and where is it we don't know heidinger your schrodinger's equation so i mean you can even get at this kind of stuff philosophically even within science but um so you're so back to mcgillchrist and even your illustration with the nail in the head, what he would say is that we've fallen too much into the mode of thinking that we fundamentally understand the world.

And this is what I call like it's rationalism. It's an overemphasis on a thinking that your models and ways of understanding are reality. They aren't. Reality is fundamentally, this is what i'm i am prone to say like human beings are incapable of objective ontological knowledge which is a philosophical thing but like we don't what that means is we don't see things in their essence in their true ultimate nature objectively we can't i would i don't know let me push back on that i i would say i was the thing we don't know. Let me push back on that. I would say... Doesn't mean we don't see things truly. Oh, so you're going to throw that wrench in there. Well, okay. Let me... Ah, you threw me off. I was going to say we are hindered from seeing things ontologically objectively.

Let me ditch the word ontologically. objectively. Let me ditch the word ontologically. Our objectivity is skewed, comes with lenses, is hindered by our culture, our gender, our socioeconomic status, our time living in a postmodern age, and so on and so forth. But that doesn't mean that we are unable to see things objectively. Our ability to see it would be skewed. That's what I would traditionally have said. Yeah, I would disagree probably. So I would say, and this doesn't mean that there's not lesser and greater degrees of objectivity. I just don't think we ever fully get there. It's kind of like in the early church fathers, we talk about God this way. Like no one knows God in his essence. We know we see him in his energies. Like

that's a distinction that early church fathers talked about because we can't know God in his essence. And I would argue we don't know anything in its essence. We just see the energies flowing from things. It's even like... What do you mean about in their essence? So like here's an illustration. Like if I said two plus two actually does equal four, or is that just a category that you're not even talking about? I mean, I don't think two plus two equals four. I can say that two plus two, if I have two rocks and two rocks over here and I put those together, that is actually four rocks.

And I have a pretty good understanding of what rockness is. There may be some mystery well so that gets in the that gets into like more complicated difficult things because like this is within that um so the most recent bring jordan peterson back into it and the most recent jordan peterson ben shapiro uh conversation they did on the rubin report this is a point that jordan pearson brings up when he's trying to talk about um they're talking about god and everything and and he's saying it's not he's not willing to rule out and he actually believes that there's something deeper and metaphysical underneath all this other stuff this purely biological case that he sets out

and and then people will come in and critique that but he said it's there there's parallels in ways that you can understand that because he says sometimes the abstraction is more real than the material thing in and of itself and like that illustration you just brought up is an example and i said this to my son so we can have like two plus two equals four but what's more? These two fingers and these two fingers equaling the four fingers, the object, the concrete thing, or the reality of two plus two equal four.

Because this is going to be gone in 100 years. I'm going to be dead. So you have the abstract concept of mathematics. Which gets into spirit stuff. That's the pattern. that's the transcendent thing the spirit is that which persists but i would say see this is why i love orthodoxy to go all the way back to the beginning because within orthodoxy and symbolism and patterns and spirituality we don't this is what i would argue is within the west we within the West, the tacit cultural lens that we get is materialism.

And I would say it's pervasive in the church, and we just don't even realize it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I heard a story, I don't know if it's true actually that uh in the last hundred years um when in the east people would say any kind of sickness is demonic oppression you know and then we discovered in the west that no it's actually germs right and so uh we go and then so a doctor was over there trying to convince them like no this is not demonic this is not there's nothing spiritual about this these are germs that are affecting you so they even took a microscope and showed them, look, you can,

we can actually see the germs and the, the Eastern thinkers say, Oh, that's what demons look like. Yeah. And it just kind of illustrates it just the, the categories are so deep that yeah. All models are false. Some are useful. The East, the, the, the East, the Eastern way of consent, because I would say both of those things are true. I mean, this is the east the eastern way of consent because i would say both of those things are true i mean this is the this is the difference between um like thinking of things in in strictly binary things which is a left brain thing

or really left brain is is binary yeah ah i i think like i'm no expert in this stuff but i think that's right maybe i mean someone will maybe point that out to me that's not true but i think but i think so oh okay yeah so um and that's not to say that both of those things aren't true like this is another thing something that so to illustrate it maybe and to get back into Jordan Peterson one of the things that like Jordan Peterson in ways saved me not saved me in the in the Christian evangelical sense but he saved me from becoming a knight like almost bordering on a relativist nihilist because there were this is there were things within post-modernism that I that I could see were true, that were valid critiques of a lot of things going on in the American church

and the modern conception of things, but I didn't have language to see where it went wrong. And Jordan Peterson helped me with this in his thing of hierarchies, which people hate. If you start trolling on Twitter, Jordan Peterson and Christian circles and the more postmodern type Christians just mock. They love to mock Jordan Peterson and hierarchy stuff, but I've never heard any of them give any substance to that.

Can you unpack that? What do you mean by hierarchies? Because I've seen some of that. The good way for me to think about hierarchies there's tons of ways to think about it but it's the exception is not the rule is a really good way to think about it like that simple axiom so like the rule is the thing that is true most of the time like that's so it's like um black and white there is black there is white but then there's also a whole bunch of grays in between that and so like you could almost think of that in terms of like binary or a spectrum so like you can think of things as simply black and white on and off

computer zeros and ones which i don't well i won't go down that rabbit trail, which is, which is an interesting thing to think about in terms of spiritual and technology and left and what computers are. Um, but, or you can think of things in terms of, so like even getting into a subject that you work a lot within like sexuality or transgender things. And is a tweet i sent out a tweet a while back that we talked about that i don't know i mean that i shared with you and i don't know what your thought i mean what your thoughts are completely on it but this is the way that i'd illustrated is like you can the the to say things are are normal is just to say statistically, this is the way things manifest most of the time.

That's what normal is. Yeah, normal is not – if you're not normal, that's not intrinsically a derogatory thing to say. No, it's not saying anything about the moral or ethical or anything substance about it. But this is where in our culture, we flipped that all on its head. And we've made, we've gotten into this language battle where words don't even mean anything anymore. Like normative, normative has to be a thing. Otherwise, nihilism. Normative is just the thing that works all the time. So here's another example that we use.

I'm a stay-at-home dad. My wife works most of the time. I think that should be the exception, not the rule. And that's not because I'm a chauvinist or anything. It's because I think biology, nature, common sense, current statistics on happiness within the modern West, with male and female people. There's a reason everyone who, that largely, normally now, people who haven't submitted to traditional structures are depressed, I think.

Like all that stuff's connected. And that doesn't mean that there can't be exceptions. I am one, right? I know. You can have this conversation. I couldn't have this conversation. Right. And that has come with its own difficulties and struggles.

And it hasn't been perfect in ways. But there are a lot of reasons which I could go into why I think it works for us and why I think that we're a legitimate exception without just like validating, you know, without just like rationalizing my situation.

Yeah. Like I think it's legit, but... So going back to... I love that. Jordan Peterson and hierarchies is that I've heard him talk about it. You know, you have... Some people think that if there's a hierarchy, the person at the top, the leader, the wealthy, the person in power, that they got there by definition by stepping on the person at the bottom. So that everything is viewed through the lens of the powerful and the oppressed, the oppressor and the oppressor.

And he says, that's just insane. Like the world will have hierarchies and inequality. And that doesn't necessarily mean that those categories are intrinsically immoral. The world that has plumbers will have some plumbers that are better at fixing pipes. they work harder, they wake up earlier. Some might be single and not married so they can work later. They earn more money. They can spend, therefore, more on marketing, advertising. They get more business.

And so you have some plumbers that are wealthier, are more influential over the plumbing industry and others that won't get there. None of that is intrinsically immoral. No. We're glad Yelp works. Yeah. I mean, in Tolkien, I shouldn't say that J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis or J.K. Rowling, it's like, well, that's not fair. They sell more books than I do.

Right. Guess what? They're better writers than I am. And people know that. And they're going to, therefore, have more money than I do. Right. Guess what? They're better writers than I am. And people know that. And they're going to therefore have more money and more opportunity. And that is a hierarchy. There are better writers. There are writers at the top, writers in the middle, and lots of writers at the bottom.

Now, those can't, even Peterson said, you know, those can, given the depravity of man or however you words it, those can turn into oppressive things. And we've seen that happen where people at the top do oppress, but hierarchies are not intrinsically. Is that a good summary of, of for sure. Okay. For sure. Yeah. They can become, um, benevolent and, and destructive and, and toxic for sure. Um, but yeah, the, the nature of hierarchy, I mean, I've never,

if someone listens to this and can somehow through you or however communicate to me something that seems like a reasonably articulated critique for the existence. I mean, I'm open. This is where those things I'm open. I'm truly open to somebody critiquing hierarchy i don't think the world would make sense i think meaning wouldn't exist let me try to push let me try to play devil's advocates i think it's always the best way to refine i mean i think for sure they could point to they could agree with everything i said and say okay on paper that's great but given in history somebody could maybe make the argument i don't know if they can validate it, but they can make it that in history, wherever hierarchies exist, there always is oppression. I guess I would turn around and say, well, actually, wherever socialism has existed, doing away with hierarchies has led to the death of millions and millions and millions of innocent people historically, just statistically. Yeah, politically. I mean, I think to say that, like, this is where you get into more of, like, the whole difference between binary and spectrum stuff. Yeah.

Within hierarchies, there's always going to be, like, this is another good model that I think is helpful, like the yin-yang model, order and chaos. Within any hierarchy, there's going to be chaos. That's the dot within the order. And those things are fluid all the time, but they're still somewhat distinct, separate things. But then as too much chaos comes in, that thing upsets and the whole whole thing dies, and a new thing comes again. That's the nature of how reality works in cycles of death and rebirth. And so within hierarchies, yes, there's always going to be like an example of a hierarchy within my family. I mean, by nature and definition, someone I'm the patriarch, my wife's the matriarch,

that has nothing to do with, I'm not making any claims of egalitarianism or anything like that. Um, I think my wife and I operate pretty much as equals and we don't have any definitive thing within that. But so like, this is where I think discussing health and unhealth or goodness and beauty is helpful because like within my family and within my hierarchy of I'm the leader and I'm the patriarch of the family. Do I do that on a whole? Well, and good, I would hope so. Does that mean there's no benevolence in the way that I interact with my children? Of course not. Right, not right right right that's not intrinsic that's not intrinsic to the it's not the hierarchy that caused that right that's that's the yin and the

yang the good and the evil that is in it's the human being that's in the heart of every person that is embedded into every every system is going to have that again even peterson talks about you know he's he would be very supportive of capitalism as the best of the available options but he says yes even then sure we need government checks and regulations and stuff to make sure that it doesn't get out of control because it will get out of control. Right. And he's not – and even within that, like he's not – this is where I think Peterson is weak is he's too staunch in defending the thing that he's trying to defend, which I think is legitimate. So that he's very leery which i think is legitimate so that so that he's very leery i think of giving and and if you watch enough of his stuff you'll see him give credence

to to the pushback because like he wouldn't deny crony capitalism he wouldn't deny corruption within within capitalism in the west and things like that but he would say what what political world system is working better right right there isn't one that's working better so yeah you can critique that this is what i think this is what he's trying to say is like sure you can critique the negatives within that but don't act like the negatives that you see are the norm that's the exception it's the exception rule thing he's saying you're trying to take the exception the negative exception and make it the rule that's where you mess up it also kind of goes this is a slightly different direction we can go but

this all kind of like overly negative view of where we are in human history and this goes back – this is so – it's so tied into commercializing the outrage culture. Yeah. That's not the best phrase. You know what I no crime to say, Hey, I just want anybody to know everything went well today in this neighborhood. Nobody's going to watch that. People want to watch the, the murders, the outrage, the stuff that, you know, is negative, but that has fed into this idea that things are just horrible right now.

When if you step back and look at human history, humans are wealthier than we ever have been in human history. Violence is at an all-time low in human history. Despite what many people assume, race crimes related to racism and hatred are at an all-time low in America and around the world. low in America and around the world. This is all from Steven Pinker's book and the Human Progress website and others. If you actually step back and look at where things are in the map of human history, the egalitarian equality across the board, I mean, you can go on and on and on and on. The only thing that isn't on that upward trajectory is the environment. And that's where even people say, yes, right now we need to figure out how to better care for our planet because the direction is headed in the opposite direction right now.

But everything else, life expectancy, health, mental health, actually mental health might be another one. Anxiety, depression, suicide in the West might be. That are going down. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that would be kind of a byproduct of technological advancement. A lot of people are, I mean, people often assume this,

but I think it's being shown, like proven that social media and other things have increased, especially in my opinion, anxiety, depression, suicide. I've heard Haidt talk about that new book i gen that he quotes or that they talk about maybe in the coddling of just yeah massive increase yeah yeah yeah um yeah and i would say a lot of that yeah because those i mean this gets back into the spiritual side of it i would say within liturgy and narratives and stories that we all live within we're storied creatures right and so if you want to if that's the news that you're doing and you're feeding

into this story that the world is bad and bad and bad and you're fighting the evil patriarchy and all it's doing like that's what you that's what you look for and that's what you see right you look at you see what you pay attention to right yeah. And you can't see anything else. You don't see what you pay attention to. That's what consciousness actually is. Consciousness is the ability to pay attention. Consciousness shuts out all your other perceptions so you can focus on something and think about it.

Yeah. That's what consciousness is. And so this gets into one of my favorite quotes that I love to bring up. It's C.S. Lewis said in The Magician's Nephew. It's a children's book. But like he drops these bombs in there. And it's what's pinned on the top of my Twitter profile. But what you see and hear depends a lot upon where you're standing.

It also depends upon the kind of person you are. Like what he's talking about is he's saying stuff that's so that's what Jordan Peterson saying. You actually can't see what you don't look at. And I mean that figuratively and literally. Wow. That's good. Yeah. I mean, you can't you pay attention to what's important to you, which is what's important to you is a hierarchy.

It's what you value the most this is jonathan edwards this is what he's saying in his freedom of the will book um and you actually can't pay attention to what you don't value it's impossible that's what human agency is and so like if you get rid of hierarchies, you destroy human agency. It's like the most satanic thing there is. You destroy what a human is. So you're not, yeah, we don't want to destroy hierarchies. We want to destroy, or we would never destroy, but we want to fight against certain oppressions and evils that could more naturally stem from a hierarchy but hierarchy this is what peterson said like hierarchies simply do and will exist that's just is that because even that comes from a value i want to defend the marginalized i want to defend the helpless the good samaritan all of that stuff those values is a hierarchy yeah yeah you know know, like you can't, it's, it's people who,

people who critique this stuff, like they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. It's the, it's the people standing firmly in midair, you know, or it's, it's like pulling the rug out from under themselves that they're standing on, which is why some of these guys go into like, philosophically go into it, absurdism and all this kind of stuff but but all of that just makes me to circle all the way back it makes me just think like you guys need to go east like this is way too left brain focused you're way too focused on your reason and rationality and thinking you understand things and um here i actually can i read you my absolute favorite quote? Yeah, yeah, you found it? Yeah. So I think this is my favorite of all time. So C.S. Lewis, he said, and at one point I came across this,

and he said that his mentor and like his hero and basically everything he did was a weak homage to George MacDonald. Like he was just a huge fan of George MacDonald. And George MacDonald was this, like the century before pastor, theologian in Scotland. And he wrote a lot of fictional works and stuff, but he wrote this book, Lilith. And so I saw that quote from Lewis and I love Lewis so much. He's for me so much. And I'm just like, why am I not reading George MacDonald? It doesn't make any sense i should totally be reading his hero you know yeah and i read his book lilith which i don't recommend to

very many people because it's a trip but um but he there's this part in the book so he said i'll just read you the quote and it's going on with this dialogue between two characters and so it starts it says i'm sorry i cannot explain the thing to you he answered but there is no provision in you for understanding it not merely therefore is the phenomenon inexplicable to you but the very nature of it is inapprehensible by you indeed i but particularly but partially apprehend it myself at the time, you are constantly experiencing things which you not only do not, but cannot understand. You think you understand them, but your understanding of them is only you're being used to them and therefore not surprised by them. You accept them not because you understand them, but because you must accept them. They are there and have unavoidable relations with you.

The fact is, and this is the key part, the fact is no man understands anything. When he knows he does not understand, that is his first tottering step, not toward understanding, but toward the capability of one day understanding. To such things as these you are not used, therefore do not fancy you understand them. Neither I nor any man can help you to understand, but I may, perhaps, help you a little to believe. The whole book is like that, but like that quote, this is what I'm, this is what I was trying to get at the beginning. And, and this is what I, to me, this is essentially what the Bible was trying to get out when it says, lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways, in your way of being acknowledge him and he'll make your path straight.

Don't think you have things figured out. Or like I read in Lewis's book recently and the end of his book in the space trilogy, which if I do nothing else, end of his book in the space trilogy which if i do nothing else but get people to read the space trilogy that's a win um in his second book paralonda toward the end he quotes it's a 17th century poet but he says tis not and mortals to commend success it's not your job to to fix the ends that's god that's you trying to play god do what you're supposed to do love well tell the truth love your neighbor like don't try the world right now and this is the left brain thing in the west i find in america we see it mainly politically because politics is

our religion i think largely but it's a bunch of people who think they understand the world, think they have everything figured out, wanting to convince everyone else of that because they think that will fix our problems. And that's wrong. It's all fundamentally wrong. What about, I mean, someone could say, are we agents? Okay, so yes, we're not going to usher in, to put it in theological terms, the kingdom per se. But we are agents in that redemptive activity. So it's not... Yeah, I agree with that. But you're saying, if I hear you correctly, that yes, God's ultimately responsible.

Yes, God's using us. But in a sense, he's using us by means of doing what you said. Just love your neighbor. Be kind. Tell people about Jesus and repent from your own sins. sense he's using us by means of doing what you said just love your neighbor do yeah you know uh be kind uh tell people about jesus and i think it's i think it's simpler it's it's be it's be holy as i am holy less way much less so than figure out the nature of the world okay and make everyone else agree with you like i don't you know that's not in the Bible. That's a kind of, yeah, that's a point of Job in many ways, but yeah. Yeah. Hey man, I got to run. This has been

fun. It's been over an hour. Can you believe it? Love it. Yeah. It was a good time. If this is Joe Rogan, we'd be just getting warmed up. He would have just finished talking about all his advertisements and then now he's getting it. Yeah. He would have just finished talking about all his advertisements and then now he's getting into this conversation. Yeah, now we can start talking about psychedelics and all the pot you smoke. Yeah, but by now he's already lit up. You saw the Elon Musk – yeah, we talked about that, right?

Yeah. That was a trip in many – Yeah, double entendre. It was a total trip. Luke, thanks so much for being on the show. And as I said in the intro, what I love about you is, and I mean this, this could come out negative, but you're not like an academic by profession. You're a stay-at-home dad. And you read ferociously.

You think deeply. you read ferociously, you think deeply. And I just, I hold you out as like, this is what, you know, cause some people think, well, I'm not a pastor. I'm not a teacher. I'm not an academic. So I don't need to think, well, you blow apart that stereotype, which is why I love to have you on the show. So thanks so much for giving us a model for, um, I, again, I hate this term, but the average person can say, oh, gosh, I need to go read

the Space Trilogy and Lilith and think much deeper about my faith than I typically do. Yeah, I mean, if the increase toward thinking helps people to live better, great. You know? Yeah.

Absolutely. All right, man, I got to run. Okay, Yeah, absolutely. All right, man. I got to run. Okay. Thanks buddy. All right. Take care. you